Does anybody else still use MP3 Players (rather than just your phone or whatever)?

[GayCoonie]

For me, I've always preferred to have a separate device for music. I don't really use my phone very much, so it saves the battery. I also prefer using an interface made for music playing, rather than using a media player on Android where I either have to find the files myself, or if my media folders are scanned, often files are there that really aren't intended to be part of my "music" library.

I could just use Spotify, but I've collected a lot of obscure tunes over the years that just aren't there, and I don't like being at the mercy of a service like that. I prefer using actual media files that I'll always be able to have regardless of what happens with Spotify or any other website.

My MP# player of choice is the Sony Walkman (yes they still use that brand) NW(Z)-A15 /A17/ A25 / A27. There's really not much of a difference between any of those, besides internal storage capacity, and I use a microSD card anyway. It's not a cheapie unit, though they go for 200 minimum new, and at least 100 used. That's a lot of the reason I like it so much, that it has expandable storage, and isn't cheap junk.

 

[rehevkor]

I have a weird response. I always like the idea of having a separate MP3 player, for ages I had an iPod shuffle, never used it. Then I set up my Gear S3 to play music - never used that for music either.

 

[GayCoonie]

I have a weird response. I always like the idea of having a separate MP3 player, for ages I had an iPod shuffle, never used it. Then I set up my Gear S3 to play music - never used that for music either.

Honestky, i don't use my mp3 player very much either, but it's great to have for going places where boredom might ensue. I tend to play games on mute while listening to my own music.

 

[spectral]

I do, never liked using my phone for audio. Mostly because I dont like having it in my pocket, even small phones are too big. I use a Sandisk Sport+, although I mainly use it for podcasts and audiobooks rather than music.

 

[FAST6191]

I can't walk with headphones in/on (for whatever reason they make me fall over) so I mostly listen to things when at my computer.

I did want a music player for the bus or train or something but for whatever reason we never got good cheap MP3 players. Back before phones did take over for most people we started to have some perfectly acceptable MP3 players around the £30 mark from the usual Chinese vendors. With scale up, time and such I expected the prices to be such that I could get an acceptable thing for £10 or something but it never came. All I wanted was something to plug a set of headphones into, possibly be powered by an AA battery but I would take an 18650 cell, microSD for storage (or one of those ones that is also a USB thumb drive), few buttons to do forward, back, pause, random play, would have been fine with a lit dot matrix screen to scroll through the tags, maybe a nice analogue volume.

 

[Jayro]

I absolutely do, I believe in using a dedicated music device. I modified my iPod Classic 4th gen with a 128GB SD card, and a new battery. I installed RockBOX and dual-boot it with iPod OS.

 

[GayCoonie]

I absolutely do, I believe in using a dedicated music device. I modified my iPod Classic 4th gen with a 128GB SD card, and a new battery. I installed RockBOX and dual-boot it with iPod OS.

I've never been a big fan of Apple. I really don't like dealing with iTunes, and all of the modding required to make an iPod usable and "normal" isn't worth it to me, when I can just use the Sony MP3 players that I like out of the box.

I had an iPod nano 4th/5th gen (I forget which) back when I was about 10, and I thought it was fine, but that's before I really got into obscure music and having a large music library, which is a pain to deal with in the Apple ecosystem. I definitely prefer my Sony players where I can put the MP3s right on the card without any special software or anything, and I can browse the music according to the id3 metadata, and everything just works,

 

[Jayro]

I've never been a big fan of Apple. I really don't like dealing with iTunes, and all of the modding required to make an iPod usable and "normal" isn't worth it to me, when I can just use the Sony MP3 players that I like out of the box.

I had an iPod nano 4th/5th gen (I forget which) back when I was about 10, and I thought it was fine, but that's before I really got into obscure music and having a large music library, which is a pain to deal with in the Apple ecosystem. I definitely prefer my Sony players where I can put the MP3s right on the card without any special software or anything, and I can browse the music according to the id3 metadata, and everything just works,

For me, modding the iPod is the fun part. I didn't want to deal with iTunes either, and now I can just drag and drop my FLAC files and listen without any conversion or syncing.

 

[GayCoonie]

For me, modding the iPod is the fun part. I didn't want to deal with iTunes either, and now I can just drag and drop my FLAC files and listen without any conversion or syncing.

Modding can definitely be fun. Personally, I don't bother with FLAC because I can not tell the difference between FLAC and a decent MP3, but that probably comes down to not really listening hard more than anything. No need to use all that extra disk space when it makes little to know difference to me.

 

[Pipistrele]

I used to prefer dedicated MP3 players for quite a while, but once budget smartphones started catching up to the audio quality of popular players, and streaming became a widespread thing, I never looked back. Smartphone as a music device is just way too convenient - little to no storage concerns, tons of software for all the various audio needs (from local music, to streaming, to podcasts, to ambient nature sounds), and just the fact that for nominal fee I can subscribe to a service of my choice and turn on nearly any track I want in 5-10 seconds (as opposed to preloading them on device in advance). That, and the fact that a lot of reasonably priced MP3 players aren't very good with wireless headphones, if they work with those in the first place.

 

[Jayro]

Modding can definitely be fun. Personally, I don't bother with FLAC because I can not tell the difference between FLAC and a decent MP3, but that probably comes down to not really listening hard more than anything. No need to use all that extra disk space when it makes little to know difference to me.

I can respect that. It's just I can hear compression in lossy formats, no matter how "good" the file claims to be (ie a 320kb/s MP3) and those "wooshing/warble" noises I hear distract me from the music. So I can only listen to lossless formats. And with 128GB cards only being $20, storage is stupidly cheap now, so that argument hardly holds weight anymore.

 

[DjoeN]

I still use my old 8gb ipod (not modded)

 

[Ryccardo]

I actually bought an iPod 5G last month, in part because I love its UI, in part because it works very well with the far superior non-iOS7-themed older versions of iTunes (as well as most 3rd party software - between Sharepod 3.9.7 and Copytrans Photo on windows, and gtkpod on Linux, you have most features covered), in part because I still own dock/remote/chargers/cables from the iPhone days

Could have used a PSP, but all the ones I own are broken in some way;
Could have used a DS, but it's clunky on the bus or bike;
Could have used a phone (and I do in the car due to having bluetooth) but not only I haven't found a music app that completely satisfies me, but I'd rather waste my phone's battery on something a phone can indeed do better (like surfing the web)!

 

[WallsAreLiquid]

I love my Sansa Clip+ for size, weight and clip, but I also miss more bulky players with AA/AAA batteries, because nothing can as good as lithium batteries when it's cold outside.

 

[Rukia17]

Before I used a mp3 player samsung all the time but it's true that now I only use my phone because I always have it on me and I found it more convenient. Although I recognize that the battery of my phone is emptying much faster.

 

[Cyan]

I love and still use my 80GB iPod5.5 for 10 years, modded with Rockbox.
it can play anything, even Snes SPC !
I can't stand Apple, itune, but Rockbox is so nice to me. It can even be used to hack my PS3 thanks to Hermes
I'm thinking about buying a new battery, mine is starting to fade away too quickly now. I already changed it once.

I don't like other devices interface. But I didn't try a lot. I just like rockbox one, with just folder and subfolders support. I don't like auto-updating libraries based on tags.

This month it started to break
I have a full line of dead pixel near the bottom. But I guess that's not that big an issue, what's important is the Audio. I don't look at the screen that often. I don't care that it's a "ipod video", I just use rockbox for the sound. seeing covers are nice addition but not the main purpose.


I have a smartphone only for a year, and never use it for audio. it doesn't have my full 80GB library. it's also too big and I rarely use it, so I prefer my small iPod.
If I can set it up to stream from my NAS, maybe I'll use it more often.

 

[GayCoonie]

I love and still use my 80GB iPod5.5 for 10 years, modded with Rockbox.
it can play anything, even Snes SPC !
I can't stand Apple, itune, but Rockbox is so nice to me. It can even be used to hack my PS3 thanks to Hermes
I'm thinking about buying a new battery, mine is starting to fade away too quickly now. I already changed it once.

I don't like other devices interface. But I didn't try a lot. I just like rockbox one, with just folder and subfolders support. I don't like auto-updating libraries based on tags.

This month it started to break
I have a full line of dead pixel near the bottom. But I guess that's not that big an issue, what's important is the Audio. I don't look at the screen that often. I don't care that it's a "ipod video", I just use rockbox for the sound. seeing covers are nice addition but not the main purpose.


I have a smartphone only for a year, and never use it for audio. it doesn't have my full 80GB library. it's also too big and I rarely use it, so I prefer my small iPod.
If I can set it up to stream from my NAS, maybe I'll use it more often.

Personally, I like the meta-data sorting. It incentivizes me to properly tag all my files, and that's useful for other things as well, such as Plex, which I also use.

 

[kuwanger]

I still use an MP3 player. Like FAST6191 mentioned there are cheap Chinese vendor ones. The good ones (A20 and similar) have a rechargeable battery, microSD slot, and around 60 hours play time costing only on the order of $25 off Amazon. The large downside is with heavy or abuse use--the latter happens a lot if you carry it on you while doing lots of physical labor for hours--it tends to break after a year or two tops. I'm not sure how long it'd last if I actually took good care of it. In any case, mostly now days I use an mp3 player some nights while I sleep.

 

[FAST6191]

Like FAST6191 mentioned there are cheap Chinese vendor ones.

I was actually unaware of any. All the ones I sought at throwaway prices had awful DACs and lacked abilities, this despite similar devices existing in the price range for far less. Might have to up my price range a bit then so thanks for the suggestions.

 

[kuwanger]

All the ones I sought at throwaway prices had awful DACs and lacked abilities, this despite similar devices existing in the price range for far less.

Well, I'm not remotely an audiophile so have no idea how good/terrible their DACs are. And I wouldn't get my hopes up on abilities since they're pretty basic. Still, if you're willing to risk the money on something like this you should get a pretty good idea on about the best you can expect. There's several different models that have the same shape/size, screen, and main dial but different auxiliary buttons and slightly different firmwares. The worst I've had of the sort would play all songs in order based on the mp3 header. The rest were smart enough to go in order by folder name then file name. The current one I have can play flac (I think), mp3, ogg, and aac (maybe wma too?), but the ogg and aac are unstable and I've never really used the flac. Anyways, good luck if you do try one out.